The New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period, 1552-664 B.C.

Around the year 1600 B.C., a semi-autonomous Theban dynasty
under the suzerainty of the Hyksos became determined to drive the
Shepherd Kings out of the country and extend its own power. The
country was liberated from the Hyksos and unified by Ahmose
(ruled 1570-1546 B.C.), the son of the last ruler of the
Seventeenth Dynasty. He was honored by subsequent generations as
the founder of a new line, the Eighteenth Dynasty, and as the
initiator of a glorious chapter in Egyptian history.

During the New Kingdom, Egypt reached the peak of its power,
wealth, and territory. The government was reorganized into a
military state with an administration centralized in the hands of
the pharaoh and his chief minister. Through the intensive
military campaigns of Pharaoh Thutmose III (1490-1436 B.C.),
Palestine, Syria, and the northern Euphrates area in Mesopotamia
were brought within the New Kingdom. This territorial expansion
involved Egypt in a complicated system of diplomacy, alliances,
and treaties. After Thutmose III established the empire,
succeeding pharaohs frequently engaged in warfare to defend the
state against the pressures of Libyans from the west, Nubians and
Ethiopians (Kushites) from the south, Hittites from the east, and
Philistines (sea people) from the Aegean-Mediterranean region of
the north.

Toward the end of the Twentieth Dynasty, Egyptian power
declined at home and abroad. Egypt was once more separated into
its natural divisions of Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt. The pharaoh
now ruled from his residence-city in the north, and Memphis
remained the hallowed capital where the pharaoh was crowned and
his jubilees celebrated. Upper Egypt was governed from Thebes.

During the Twenty-first Dynasty, the pharaohs ruled from
Tanis (San al Hajar al Qibliyah), while a virtually autonomous
theocracy controlled Thebes. Egyptian control in Nubia and
Ethiopia vanished. The pharaohs of the Twenty-second and Twentythird dynasties were mostly Libyans. Those of the brief Twentyfourth Dynasty were Egyptians of the Nile Delta, and those of the
Twenty-fifth were Nubians and Ethiopians. This dynasty's ventures
into Palestine brought about an Assyrian intervention, resulting
in the rejection of the Ethiopians and the reestablishment by the
Assyrians of Egyptian rulers at Sais (Sa al Hajar), about eighty
kilometers southeast of Alexandria (Al Iskandariyah) on the
Rosetta branch of the Nile.

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